The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911)

Through all one unison is singing clear;
All sounds, all colors in one rapture die.
Breathe slow, O heart, breathe slow!
A presence from below
Moves toward the breathing world from that dark deep,
Whereof men fabling tell what no man knows,
By little fires amid the winter snows,
When earth lies stark in her titanic sleep
And doth with cold expire;
He brings thee all, O Maiden flower of earth,
Her child in whom all nature comes to birth,
Thee, the fruition of all dark desire.
*       *       *       *       *
O Proserpine, dream not that thou art gone
Far from our loves, half-human, half-divine;
Thou hast a holier adoration won
In many a heart that worships at no shrine.
Where light and warmth behold me,
And flower and wheat infold me,
I lift a dearer prayer than all prayers past:
He who so loved thee that the live earth clove
Before his pathway unto light and love,
And took thy flower-full bosom, – who at last
Shall every blossom cull, —
Lover the most of what is most our own,
The mightiest lover that the world has known,
Dark lover, Death, – was he not beautiful?[154 - From Proserpine, stanzas written by Lake Pergusa; by George E. Woodberry (CenturyMagazine, July, 1909).]

Fig. 91. Triptolemus and the Eleusinian Deities

117. Triptolemus and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Ceres, pacified with this arrangement, restored the earth to her favor. Now she remembered, also, Celeus and his family, and her promise to his infant son Triptolemus. She taught the boy the use of the plow and how to sow the seed. She took him in her chariot, drawn by winged dragons, through all the countries of the earth; and under her guidance he imparted to mankind valuable grains and the knowledge of agriculture. After his return Triptolemus built a temple to Ceres in Eleusis and established the worship of the goddess under the name of the Eleusinian mysteries, which in the splendor and solemnity of their observance surpassed all other religious celebrations among the Greeks.

Fig. 92. Demeter, Triptolemus, and Proserpina

118. Orpheus andEurydice.[155 - Ovid, Metam. 10, 1-77.] Of mortals who have visited Hades and returned, none has a sweeter or sadder history than Orpheus, son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. Presented by his father with a lyre and taught to play upon it, he became the most famous of musicians, and not only his fellow mortals but even the wild beasts were softened by his strains. The very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. And so also was Eurydice, – whom he loved and won.

Fig. 93. Orpheus and Eurydice

From the painting by Lord Leighton

Hymen was called to bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice, but he conveyed no happy omens with him. His torch smoked and brought tears into the eyes. In keeping with such sad prognostics, Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, was seen by the shepherd Aristæus, who was struck with her beauty and made advances to her. As she fled she trod upon a snake in the grass, and was bitten in the foot. She died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding his complaint of no avail, resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead. He descended by a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Tænarus, and arrived in the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts and presented himself before the throne of Pluto and Proserpine. Accompanying his words with the lyre, he sang his petition for his wife. Without her he would not return. In such tender strains he sang that the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaüs rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen.[156 - See Commentary] Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist and Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice was called. She came from among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on condition that he should not turn round to look at her till they should have reached the upper air. Under this condition they proceeded on their way, he leading, she following. Mindful of his promise, without let or hindrance the bard passed through the horrors of hell. All Hades held its breath.

Fig. 94. Farewell of Orpheus and Eurydice

… On he slept,
And Cerberus held agape his triple jaws;
On stept the bard. Ixion's wheel stood still.
Now, past all peril, free was his return,
And now was hastening into upper air
Eurydice, when sudden madness seized
The incautious lover; pardonable fault,
If they below could pardon: on the verge
Of light he stood, and on Eurydice
(Mindless of fate, alas! and soul-subdued)
Lookt back.

There, Orpheus! Orpheus! there was all
Thy labor shed, there burst the Dynast's bond,
And thrice arose that rumor from the lake.
"Ah, what!" she cried, "what madness hath undone
Me! and, ah, wretched! thee, my Orpheus, too!
For lo! the cruel Fates recall me now;
Chill slumbers press my swimming eyes… Farewell!
Night rolls intense around me as I spread
My helpless arms … thine, thine no more … to thee."
She spake, and, like a vapor, into air
Flew, nor beheld him as he claspt the void
And sought to speak; in vain; the ferry-guard
Now would not row him o'er the lake again,
His wife twice lost, what could he? whither go?
What chant, what wailing, move the Powers of Hell?
Cold in the Stygian bark and lone was she.

Beneath a rock o'er Strymon's flood on high,
Seven months, seven long-continued months, 'tis said,
He breath'd his sorrows in a desert cave,
And sooth'd the tiger, moved the oak, with song.[157 - From W. S. Landor's Orpheus and Eurydice in Dry Sticks.]

The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed their advances. Finally, excited by the rites of Bacchus, one of them exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!" and threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his feet; so also the stones that they threw at him. But the women, raising a scream, drowned the voice of the music, and overwhelmed him with their missiles. Like maniacs they tore him limb from limb; then cast his head and lyre into the river Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music to which the shores responded. The Muses buried the fragments of his body at Libethra, where the nightingale is said to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other part of Greece. His lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars; but the shade of the bard passed a second time to Tartarus and rejoined Eurydice.

Other mortals who visited the Stygian realm and returned were Hercules, Theseus, Ulysses, and Æneas.[158 - See Index.]

CHAPTER X

MYTHS OF NEPTUNE, RULER OF THE WATERS

Fig. 95. Poseidon

119. Lord of the Sea. Neptune (Poseidon) was lord both of salt waters and of fresh. The myths that turn on his life as lord of the sea illustrate his defiant invasions of lands belonging to other gods, or his character as earth shaker and earth protector. Of his contests with other gods, that with Minerva for Athens has been related. He contested Corinth with Helios, Argos with Juno, Ægina with Jove, Naxos with Bacchus, and Delphi with Apollo. That he did not always make encroachments in person upon the land that he desired to possess or to punish, but sent some monster instead, will be seen in the myth of Andromeda[159 - § 154.] and in the following story of Hesione,[160 - Iliad, 5, 649; Apollodorus, 3, 12, § 7.] the daughter of Laomedon of Troy.

Neptune and Apollo had fallen under the displeasure of Jupiter after the overthrow of the giants. They were compelled, it is said, to resign for a season their respective functions and to serve Laomedon, then about to build the city of Troy. They aided the king in erecting the walls of the city but were refused the wages agreed upon. Justly offended, Neptune ravaged the land by floods and sent against it a sea monster, to satiate the appetite of which the desperate Laomedon was driven to offer his daughter Hesione. But Hercules appeared upon the scene, killed the monster, and rescued the maiden. Neptune, however, nursed his wrath; and it was still warm when the Greeks marched against Troy.

Of a like impetuous and ungovernable temper were the sons of Neptune by mortal mothers. From him were sprung the savage Læstrygonians, Orion, the Cyclops Polyphemus, the giant Antæus whom Hercules slew, Procrustes, and many another redoubtable being whose fortunes are elsewhere recounted.[161 - See Index.]

120. Lord of Streams and Fountains. As earth shaker, the ruler of the deep was known to effect convulsions of nature that made Pluto leap from his throne lest the firmament of the underworld might be falling about his ears. But as god of the streams and fountains, Neptune displayed milder characteristics. When Amymone, sent by her father Danaüs to draw water, was pursued by a satyr, Neptune gave ear to her cry for help, dispatched the satyr, made love to the maiden, and boring the earth with his trident called forth the spring that still bears the Danaïd's name. He loved the goddess Ceres also, through whose pastures his rivers strayed; and Arne the shepherdess, daughter of King Æolus, by whom he became the forefather of the Bœotians. His children, Pelias and Neleus, by the princess Tyro, whom he wooed in the form of her lover Enipeus, became keepers of horses – animals especially dear to Neptune. Perhaps it was the similarity of horse-taming to wave-taming that attracted the god to these quadrupeds; perhaps it was because they increased in beauty and speed on the pastures watered by his streams. It is said, indeed, that the first and fleetest of horses, Arion, was the offspring of Neptune and Ceres, or of Neptune and a Fury.

121. Pelops and Hippodamia.[162 - Hyginus, Fab. 84, 253; Pindar, Olymp. 1, 114.] To Pelops, brother of Niobe, Neptune imparted skill in training and driving horses, – and with good effect. For it happened that Pelops fell in love with Hippodamia, daughter of Œnomaüs, king of Elis and son of Mars, – a girl of whom it was reported that none could win her save by worsting the father in a chariot race, and that none might fail in that race and come off alive. Since an oracle, too, had warned Œnomaüs to beware of the future husband of his daughter, he had provided himself with horses whose speed was like the cyclone. But Pelops, obtaining from Neptune winged steeds, entered the race and won it, – whether by the speed of his horses or by the aid of Hippodamia, who, it is said, bribed her father's charioteer, Myrtilus, to take a bolt out of the chariot of Œnomaüs, is uncertain. At any rate, Pelops married Hippodamia. He was so injudicious, however, as to throw Myrtilus into the sea; and from that treachery sprang the misfortunes of the house of Pelops. For Myrtilus, dying, cursed the murderer and his race.

Fig. 96. Pelops winning the Race, Hippodamia looking on